A key focus of this blog is the history of Jacksons in Ireland. I am specially curious about those who may be related to Sir Thomas Jackson (1841-1915). His life is key to understanding how a dozen or so young men, sons of Irish tenant farmers, shaped the future of international banking in the Far East in the late 1800s. I also use this blog as a place for playful posts: book and restaurant reviews, recipes, and events in my life. WARNING: Note the date of each post. Some may be outdated.

Pages

Search This Blog

Friday, May 22, 2015

Today, Friday May 22, 2105, voters in Ireland are going to
the polls to vote on a bill to amend the constitution to permit marriage
between men who wish to marry men, or women who wish to marry women. Gay people
have often been written out of family histories. Even today, most genealogical data
bases do not have a way to include same-sex marriages. There are several gay
people in my extended family who did not live to see a day when their heart’s
desires could be recognized. One is Dorothy Jackson.

Dorothy St. Felix Jackson, the youngest daughter of Sir
Thomas Jackson and his wife Amelia, was born in 1887. Like her father, she
loved sports, and allegedly was a wicked golfer and a good shot with a rifle. I
have a photo of her as a young woman wearing men’s riding gear, but I am in
Ireland right now, away from home, and can’t access it. Julian Currie shared it
with me in 2006, on one of my earlier visits. Unfortunately, I have since lost
touch with Julian. He was one of the great-grandsons of Sir Thomas Jackson.
Instead, here is a photo that was shared by another great-grandson of Sir
Thomas Jackson, Pat Roberts.

Here is Dorothy, age 12, about to leap off the side of a ship with men a
decade older than her. In a
letter sent to her father dated Aug 18, 1896, her grandmother comments: Dorothy is all alive; I believe she does not
know what fear is. One family member told me that she was the first woman
in England to get a driver’s license, but I cannot yet prove or disprove this.

Pat Roberts grew up knowing Dorothy as one of his feisty
great-aunts. She always dressed in men’s clothing, with her suits made by the
best of London’s tailors. Unlike most men with a significant
number of ties in their collection, she often got tired of certain designs and
passed those ties on to her grand-nephews, such asPat.

One remarkable thing about how Dorothy lived her life was
that she was a lesbian living openly with her partner Dorothy Fitch at Barony House (or cottage), Glengarriff, Co. Cork . She lived there for several decades, in such a way that she bridged not only the
sexual divide, but also the faith divide. Thomas Jackson, one of her great
nephews, told me that when she died in 1964, her Catholic pall bearers bore her
hearse to the doorway of the Church of Ireland, where her Protestant friends
then took over. She is buried there in the Protestant graveyard, but I have yet
to make my way to Glengarriff to see it for myself. Her partner, Dorothy Fitch,
died sometime around 1985.

The way that both
Dorothies handled the legacies in their respective estates speaks volumes about
how much family mattered to them. Dorothy J left much of her estate to her
partner, Dorothy F. (as one might expect), but when Dorothy F. died a couple of
decades after Dorothy J. (it is confusing that they are both named Dorothy!), Dorothy
F. arranged for trusts to be set up for several of the Jackson grand-nieces and
nephews.

We also know
that Dorothy J. had at least one other serious love in her life: Phyllis Keyes.
Phyllis, was the daughter of Sir Roger Keyes, an admiral in the British navy who had been born in
India. Her brother
Geoffrey got a VC for trying to kill Rommel in Northern Africa. Given the
army background of the family, and also the army background of several of
Dorothy’s brothers, perhaps this is how they met. One other possibility is that
they met through the Woolf family connections in Hong Kong. Bella Sydney Woolf,
sister of Leonard Woolf and hence sister-in-law to the author Virginia Woolf
married the Hong Kong Colonial Secretary, Tom Southorn. Also,
Leonard Woolf would have been in Hong Kong when the Jacksons were there. More
work is needed on this front.

Phyllis, born
in 1880 and seven years older than Dorothy, was on the periphery of
the Bloomsbury group. One can assume that even though Dorothy seems to have
been more sporty than artistic, that she would have socialized with at least
some of their members. They were a group of artists and writers who lived with a
more fluid approach to gender and sexuality than was common in much of British
culture at the time.

There is lot more about Phyllis and her pottery available on
line, but it also seems clear that she was probably bisexual. At one point, she
got so besotted with Duncan Grant, a
potter who she both worked and socialized with in the 1930s, that his wife
Vanessa Bell finally composed a letter on her husband’s behalf asking Phyllis
to back off. As far as Duncan was concerned, they were just friends.

Phyllis Keyes family had Irish connections, and I do
not know if Dorothy Fitch’s did as well. In fact, I know absolutely nothing
about Dorothy Fitch. I also do not know what initially took Dorothy Jackson to
Glengarriff, only that the Valuation records show her there as early as 1929. Her
sister, Amy Oliver Lloyd also mentions visiting her that year: We
went to Ireland for a fortnight at Easter to Glengarriff, Co. Cork.... Dot
& Honor Hamilton there. We did a lot of boating in the summer. Honor Hamilton owned the house where she
and Dorothy J. lived at that point. Was she also a lover? I don’t know. A
decade later, Amy’s son Richard also visited: Richard] had previously spent his usual fortnight’s holiday as Dot’s
guest in Glengarriff with Bill Croom.

I have so much more to learn, but given the
events of today – here in Ireland - I
want to honour Dorothy, and make sure that I write her into the family history,
at least to the extent that I am able. Were she alive today, I know how she
would vote YES!, and I also know that should the vote succeed, that would toast
its passage with a more than generous tote of good Irish Whiskey.

Thursday, May 21, 2015

Years ago, when I was actually paid to solve problems, I
often tossed up what I called clay pigeons
as a way to focus thinking. It is not the only way, or even always the best
way, but it can be effective. In one experiment about the value of having
something to focus on, it was proven that men significantly improved their aim
when a dead fly was placed in the urinals that they used. I am not making this
up. Of course, if the clay pigeon, or dead fly, or whatever else you are choosing
to focus on turns out to be a red herring, it does make sense to stop aiming
at it. Especially if it is on the floor.

With respect to my work on who Sir Thomas Jackson might have
thought his ancestors were, my clay pigeon is in the form of a shoveller
-a duck – and it has proven to be remarkably effective, thanks to the fact that
my own research has been complemented by the indefatigable efforts of Jan Waugh
from Arizona. One day, I hope we meet.

ARMS: Ermine on a pile azure between two fountains in
base proper a Sheldrake or. CREST: Upon a fountain proper a
Sheldrake or. MOTTO Aut Mors aut Vitoria (Either
death or victory).

After seeing the shovellers on Sir Thomas’ coat of arms, Jan
and I started seeing shovellers in other Jackson coats of arms – veritable
flocks of them. I suspect that most of this has to do with the dominance of the
Mercers and Clothworkers Guilds in bankrolling
King and Queen, bailing out other hard up aristocrats, and yes, even contributing
funds to the first settlement at Virginia in America.

It would help if there were written records about why these
shovellers were included in Sir Thomas’ coat of arms, but unfortunately no such
records exist. Peter O’Donaghue, York Herald at the College of Arms in London,
was clear on this point. I have to say that I was thrilled to hear from him a
couple of days ago. I had been trying for years to find out whether there were
any records concerning the creation of Sir Thomas’ coats of arms, but had been
clearly sending letters to the wrong in-box. Now that I know that there is
nothing to be found, I can at least stop looking and hoping.

Paraphrasing the advice that I got from Mr. O’Donaghue,
coats of arms are like jazz – they are best enjoyed as a riff. Take them for what they are. For hundreds of
years men would invent arms for themselves, even though they had not been
granted the official use of them. Then, for those who did become baronets, and
had already been usuing their own self-created arms, they tended to
stick with the design that they had already been using for years. Others simply
appropriated aspects of Arms that had been used by prestigious people who
shared the same surname. It isn’t far off from the kind of heraldic Clip Art you
find on mugs and plaques in tourist shops in Temple Bar in the heart of Dublin.
There is usually little point in expecting this to be meaningful in terms of either
blood-lines or family ties (not always the same thing – as we know from the frequency
of the so-called non-paternal events).
But sometimes there is a point.

For years, I took copious notes of any Jackson arms that had
birds on them. Then I posted what I had found on a page on my web site. One of
these memorials revealed the sad tale of a young mother, who had died at age
twenty-four after having already buried two infant sons. Only her daughter Susanna, and
her husband Richard survived her. Thanks to Anthony R. Yates of Leicester, I even
have an image of her memorial to share. Some repainting of the memorial, which was
done in more recent times, used colours for the Bates side of the crest which are incorrect, but the colours used for the Jackson
touch-up are probably close enough:

ASHBY-DE-LA-ZOUCH CHURCH, CO. LEICESTER Mural monument:

Near this place lieth the body of

ANN

Wife of Richard Jackson, second

Son of William of Coleraine

In ye County of Derry, in ye Kingdom

Of Ireland Esq. Daughter of Thomas

Bate of Ashby Gen. And Dorothy his

Wife, who departed this life the 13th

Of July, in ye year One thousand six

Hundred and ninety eight.

In ye twenty-fourth year of her age

Having had issue two sons

William and Thomas

& one daughter Susanna

Who only survived her.

Above are painted arms
(gules, a fesse between three shovellers or; impaling Bate).

This is where my own ignorance – that following such birds
was futile - led me to learning about Richard Jackson (1722-1787) of Forkhill. The
Anne Bate who died at age twenty-four was the first wife of his father, Richard Jackson (1658-1730). Richard
of Forkhill was the first-born son of his father’s second wife – Elizabeth Boyd,
about whom I know nothing. Richard, who had bought the lands of Forkhill in
1742 when he had just come of age, died without issue. In his will, he created
a trust to take care of the poor of his parish and to fund missionary work. He also made a donation to the Armagh Infirmary for the good of my poor fellow creatures who
are destroyed by the advice of Quack Doctors.Unfortunately, his good intentions were
undermined by legal nit-picking. It took an Act of Parliament and decades of
litigation to sort it all out, but that’s a whole other story.

As a man who valued education, and paid to ensure schools were available in his parish - albeit not Catholic ones (he was a Protestant man of his time and place) - he poses here as a young man with his copy of Horace.

Meantime, there are the birds. Shovellers, to be precise. Richard
of Forkhill had them in his family crest, and so did his father and grandfather. Had
I not swallowed the notion that birds of
a feather fly together, even in heraldic arms, I would never have even
bothered to try to find the painting of Richard Jackson of Fork Hill aka
Forkill. When I met up with the actual painting and its current custodian, I also found that Sir Thomas
Jackson considered himself to be a kinsman of the Jacksons of Forkhill. A friend, Linda Leonard, will soon
be checking out the pertinent correspondence at PRONI. If Thomas Jackson’s
letters are there, I will definitely be doing the happy dance.

FROM: A Short history of the Jackson Charitable Trust, Forkhill. 1789-2006.

This is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what I have
learned by bird watching. There will be more to come. The stories that connect
the Jacksons with shovellers in their family crests stretch back and include Jackson family
lines in Ireland, Yorkshire, Westmorland, London, and as you can see, even
counties such as Leicestershire, places that you might not expect.

Monday, May 18, 2015

It is surprising – at least to me – how often I encounter a
bit of oral history or local knowledge, and then days later am able to find that
it is a perfect fit with the written record. Last week, I was enjoying a lovely
Sunday dinner made by Marie Lynch at Cavananore in Co. Louth, when her husband Eugene asked
me: Have you ever heard about Jackson’s
Rocks? I hadn’t. I’ll
take you there. He wasn’t sure exactly where they were, only that they were
somewhere near Liscalgot. After a few stops along the road to see if we could
learn more, we arrived at a bungalow where Mary & James Casey lived on Liscalgot
Road. They were just pulling out of their driveway when we arrived.

Do you have a minute? Eugene asked. This being Ireland, which as far
as I can see is generosity personified, they did. They backed up into their
driveway and welcomed us into their home, and we explained what it was that we
were seeking. I should mention that it was totally bucketing down with the kind
of rain that made you not only want to wear a hat or hoist an umbrella, but
instead to duck and seek cover.

Jackson’s Rocks? Yes, Mary
said. There was a fairy ring there. James
pointed towards a hedge beside their house. Behind
there. He grabbed a hat, and rain jacket, and the three of us went back out
into the elements. Not much further out of their driveway and along down
Liscalgot Road, I clambered up on the wee ledge beside the hedge at the edge of
the road, and shot over the branches as best I could. Not that there was much
to see, even taking my fogged up glasses into account. Had I not heard tell of the
story connected to it, I would have walked right on past it in utter ignorance.

The cashel on Liscalgot Road - aka Jackson's Rocks.

The next day, I was in the Armagh Country Museum, and the
curator, Sean Barden set out a pile of T.G.F. Paterson’s notebooks for me to
peruse. Lo and behold, in the first one, Paterson was describing this same bit
of land as it had appeared to him in 1930. He called it a cashel. A cashel is
the anglicised version of the Irish word Caiseal, meaning "stone
fort". It turned out, there were two cashels in the area. The first that he mentioned was
at Liscalgot:

The 1st cashel mentioned:

TGF Patterson Notebook No 135.
LISCALGOT O.S. Sheet No 31

There are two cashels in this townland, one on the farm of Mr. Bernard
Loy (and known as Loy’s For[th]) and the other on a grazing farm (within a
stone throw) belonging to Sir Thomas
Jackson. Both are well known locally, Loy’s being perhaps the more “famous”
of the two. The cashel on the Jackson
property contained a “cave” but it is now (1930) closed. These forts are not
shown on the maps of 1855.The Jackson
cashel, until a few years ago was a mass of thorns etc. These have now been
cleared away but Loys Forth is still very much overgrown.

NOTE: An Alice JACKSON married an unnamed LOY in the
mid to late 1700s, and this may have been their land. She was a daughter of
George JACKSON (1718-1782) and Margaret O’Laughlin (1722-1797) – the g-g-grandparents
of Sir Thomas Jackson. Alice’s family farmed at Liscalgot, and her father and
brother were both schoolmasters of the Creggan Charter School (the latter fired
for reasons of scandal).

It is hard to see - but look at the middle right of the photo,just above Milltown Bridge. The penciled
in X is the kind of mark that TGF
Paterson would have made. It suggests to me that this is where he thought the location
of the cashel was. This copy
of this map dates from 1836, and is held at the Armagh County Museum.

The 2nd cashel mentioned:

TGF Patterson Notebook 284 Vol
3.: CORAGH OS Sheet No 8

JACKSON’S FORT The rampart of the ring of this earthwork
has been levelled into the trench all the way round with the result that the
ring sits several feet high above the surrounding fields. It is now (1931) in
use as an orchard. Mr. Allen, the present owner of the farm states that his
family settled in the adjoining townland of Ternacreevy in 1616. His mother was
a Miss Jackson daughter of the
former owner & the Jackson’s held
the farm “from the days of Cromwell”.

On
this map from 1836, held at the Armagh County Museum, TGF Paterson’s penciled
annotation suggests that this is where he thought this cashel was. Even though
the townland in this 1836 map was called Cornoonagh, I assume that this is the
same townland referred to in his 1930 notes as Coragh.

Of course, given the nature of my particular quest, my next question is: who was the father-in-law of
the Mr. Allen mentioned in Paterson’s notes, the Mr. Jackson who would have owned the farm in
Coragh. More importantly, who was the Miss Jackson who was the mother of the younger Mr. Allen. This
could go a long way to solving the puzzle of the relationships between several
of the 19th Century Jacksons who lived in and around the Parish of
Creggan from the mid-1600s to the mid-1800s.

Sunday, May 17, 2015

Heraldry is as much an art as it is a science. My own
introduction to it came when I was an Alderman serving on the Mission City
Council in the mid to late 1980s. Canada’s Chief Herald met with us to design
our very first coat of arms. It was a pleasant distraction from talking about
why the sewer pipes near the prison kept corroding and leaking (was it the
diet?).

Designing coats of arms is akin to designing a blog template
using something like WordPress or Google. There are all these designated places
where the right bits need to be tucked in, in the right format, and there are
rules about what should go where. Here is the usual template for a coat of arms:

An achievementin heraldry is a full
display of all the heraldic components to which the bearer of a coat of arms is
entitled. SOURCE: Wikipedia.

When it comes to deciding what gets included in a coat of arms,
the word entitled is one of those
very dodgy words. Who is the person who ultimately decides who can use certain
heraldic components? On the website of the Mission City Coat of Arms,
there is a description of what ended up being included, but there is no
description of how they got included.
This is not unusual in heraldic design, but in this instance, I had a front row
seat.

The Herald was a thoughtful man, well versed in his trade,
and he arrived - as any good designer does - with a suggested template and thoughts
about what should go into it. Since Mission City was a town that had grown up
around an Oblate mission, he suggested that the core of the design should
include a cross. Heraldry has its own equivalent of Clip Art elements. In this instance,
the cross that he was showing us did not look anything like an Oblate cross.

Thankfully, our Herald was a good listener. He considered
all of our suggestions, and after I winged and whined about a generic cross not
being suitable, he tromped around the Oblate graveyard to see what an Oblate
cross looked like. Then he included it.

The core of the design, the shield of arms, is a new symbol in heraldry,
the Mission cross…. On the Mission cross is placed the form of cross favored by
the Oblate Fathers, whose school marked the beginnings of the District in
modern times.

In the grassy bit called the supporters you can see some strawberry flowers. I had asked that
they be included as a way to recognize the Japanese farmers. They had been forced
out of their farms in 1941, and then lost them because of a specious link -
racially based - between them and the bombing of Pearl Harbour. As it turned
out, the strawberries did get included in the coat of arms, but not that part
of the rationale.Ah, well…

The reason for this lengthy ramble about heraldry is because
I am working on a post about Sir Thomas Jackson, and the sheldrakes – in other
words: ducks - in his coat of arms.

ARMS: Ermine on a pile azure between two fountains in
base proper a Sheldrake or. CREST: Upon a fountain proper a
Sheldrake or. MOTTO Aut Mors aut Vitoria (Either
death or victory).

I continue to be curious about whether the sheldrakes were included
because the British herald thought they were a good fit, or to what extent it
was because Thomas Jackson requested them. Is there any correspondence in their
files? I am less curious in answering the contemporary question of Who Do you think You Are? than I am in
answering the question: Who Did He Think He
Was? Did he believe that he was related to Richard Jackson of the Forkhill
Trust fame? My guess is that he did, and there are considerable grounds to buttress
this case. I will get to that in a future post.

Over the years, I have made several requests to the College of Arms to see if I can
run this to ground, but perhaps I have been sending my enquiries to the wrong
place. This morning, I found a new website – or at
least new to me - and it may work better than what I have been doing so far. I
will keep you posted.

About Me

Author And Researcher. I am currently writing a book on the life of Sir Thomas Jackson. He was the son of tenant farmers, born just before the Famine in South Armagh, who was knighted because he not only lead HSBC into the 20th Century, but was also responsible for assisting with the funding of much of the economic development in China & Japan in the late 1800s. My first published book was "Some Become Flowers: Living with Dying at Home".